Property

PhD Defence Preview

So it’s all happening tomorrow. I defend my thesis. Not only will I be the placed under scrutiny and stress – but I will also be wearing a suit! For those of you who may want to read the thesis it’s over here.

If you don’t feel like reading it you can get the main arguments & counter-arguments by attending the defence tomorrow in Göteborg (again more info here).

If you cannot attend then you can catch me presenting my thesis at Humlab in Umeå. The presentation has been streamed and is online here.

Here are some “promotional” pictures…

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Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 info from FSF

The Free Software Foundation wishes to clarify a few factual points about the Second Discussion Draft of GNU GPL version 3, on which recent discussion has presented inaccurate information.

1. The FSF has no power to force anyone to switch from GPLv2 to GPLv3 on their own code.  We intentionally wrote GPLv2 (and GPLv1) so we would not have this power.  Software developers will continue to have the right to use GPLv2 for their code after GPLv3 is published, and we will respect their decisions.

2. In order to honor freedom 0, your freedom to run the program as you wish, a free software license may not contain “use restrictions” that would restrict what you can do with it. Contrary to what some have said, the GPLv3 draft has no use restrictions, and the final version won’t either.

GPLv3 will prohibit certain distribution practices which restrict users’ freedom to modify the code.  We hope this policy will thwart the ways some companies wish to “use” free software — namely, distributing it to you while controlling what you can do with it.  This policy is not a “use restriction”: it doesn’t restrict how they, or you, can run the program; it doesn’t restrict what they, or you, can make the program do.  Rather it ensures you, as a user, are as free as they are.

3. Where GPLv2 relies on an implicit patent license, which depends on US law, GPLv3 contains an explicit patent license that does the same job internationally.

Contrary to what some have said, GPLv3 will not cause a company to “lose its entire [software] patent portfolio”.  It simply says that if someone has a patent covering XYZ, and distributes a GPL-covered program to do XYZ, he can’t sue the program’s subsequent users, redistributors and improvers for doing XYZ with their own versions of that program.  This has no effect on other patents which that program does not implement.

Software patents attack the freedom of all software developers and users; their only legitimate use is to deter aggression using software patents.  Therefore, if we could abolish every entity’s entire portfolio of software patents tomorrow, we would jump at the chance.  But it isn’t possible for a software license such as the GNU GPL to achieve such a result.

We do, however, hope that GPL v3 can solve a part of the patent problem.  The FSF is now negotiating with organizations holding substantial patent inventories, trying to mediate between their conflicting “extreme” positions.  We hope to work out the precise details of the explicit patent license so as to free software developers from patent aggression under a substantial fraction of software patents.  To fully protect software developers and users from software patents will, however, require changes in patent law.

Posted on by mklang

Read Book Change World

Do you have a guilty conscious about books you should have read? I do. Most of the time I can ignore this little voice but every so often the voice shouts too loud to be ignored.

One book which I thought I should read when it came out in 2000 was Monbiotâ??s â??The Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world orderâ?? but somehow I always had other stuff to do.

Then I began reading Monbiotâ??s writing online. He posts some (all?) of his newspaper articles online a short while after they have appeared in the newspapers. His â??Children of the Machineâ?? (2006) is an insightful understanding of how RFID technology will slowly come to be accepted and to control us.

Anyway I bought his Age of Consent and I was not disappointed. Here is a man who writes about the complicated hypocrisies of world economics in a manner that is understandable, entertaining and at the same time provoking.

His final goal is to provoke the reader into action. But he is aware that he must move the reader from ignorance, to understanding, to agreement before he gets anyone to act.

Some short quotes:

We must accept that democracy will always be something of a mess. Attempting to tidy it up too much could mean subordinating diversity to universalism and the individual consciousness to the general will to such an extent that we may establish the preconditions not for freedom but for captivity. We must leave gaps between the building blocks, in case we accidentally build a wall. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 115)

Throughout this manifesto, I have sought to suggest ways in which we can use the strengths of our opponents to our advantage, and it seems to me that the roaming hunger of corporations is another asset we can turn to our account. (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p)

â?¦the curtailment of the world-eating mathematically impossible system we call capitalism, and its replacement with a benign and viable means of economic exchangeâ?¦ (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p 238)

I end this with the same words with which he ends his book:

Well? What are you waiting for?

Posted on by mklang

Anti-DRM Day in Göteborg

The 3rd of October has been announced as the â??Day Against DRMâ??. All over the world action groups are going out to protest against the uses and abuses of DRM. Naturally we will be active in Göteborg – more information below.

The point of the day is to be able to bring forward information to the general public and to show that the public concern about DRM is not limited to online virtual activity.

Anti-DRM actions in the past have taken the form of protesters, often wearing yellow (preferably haz-mat) suits protesting and handing out material.

Here is an example of an anti-DRM action which was held in Chicago on June 10, 2006

Naturally there will be an anti-DRM action in my hometown of Göteborg. So if you want the opportunity to see me in a yellow safety suit, why not join in and take a stand against DRM.

So you want to join in? or just watch the party? Well the dates and times are

3 October 08.30-10.15 Chalmersplatsen (outside Chalmers main entrance)
3 October 11.45-13.15 the corner of �. Hamngatan & �. Larmgatan (next to Kopparmärra)

If you let me know if you are interested in joining in then maybe I can organise a yellow suit for you!

For those of you who maybe follow this blog you will realise that the 3 October is the day after I defend my PhD. So this will be the day after the party…
More about DRM on Wikipedia

Posted on by mklang

Whats Cooking? Norms Based Property Regimes

Somehow, somewhere along the line our society has decided that certain types of intellectual endeavour were worth protecting and encouraging. Not all types. Just some. Through brilliant social positioning and political lobbying these intellectual endeavours have achieved the status of property. (For more on this read No Trespassing â?? Eva Hemmungs Wirtén).

Stop! Think! Property. Property is usually considered amongst the human rights. The focus on property right occasionally risked upsetting the balance of rights and encroaching on other rights. This led Martin Luther King to write:

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Despite the fact that intellectual property protection as we understand it today is not as old as many believe, we have managed to raise it to an eternal value. This is to say we believe that this is the way that it always has been. Implicit with this idea comes the follow-up thought that changing this is not worth the effort.

The interesting thing is that there are many types of knowledge that is not protected by intellectual property. Some of these are not valuable but others are extremely valuable.

A personâ??s honour is something that may be painstakingly built up over a lifetime within the community group. Whether this person is a diamond trader or part of a criminal organisation this is a valuable commodity, which is unprotected. Defamation law attempts to cover certain parts â?? but this protection has nowhere near the far-reaching effects of intellectual property.

A farmerâ??s knowledge over the terrain and weather, a craftsmanâ??s knowledge of tools and materials and a teachers experience are all valuable commodities in the daily life of these people.

My current favourite example comes from an article by Emmanuelle Fauchart and Eric von Hippel (his books are available online free) about the value of the knowledge of French chefs. Especially in their struggle to gain and maintain Michelin stars.

A star in the Michelin Guide is a valuable commodity. It makes and breaks restaurants and the career of chefs. It has also been the source of some scandals (wikipedia).

The question the article poses is why when the commodity is so valuable donâ??t chefs copy each other? Rather than innovate and surpass their competitors why not emulate? There is no law, no intellectual property in food dishes. Despite the fact that they are highly creative. The answer, according to Fauchart and von Hippel lies in â??norms basedâ?? intellectual property systems.

What we see is regulation by advanced group norms that allow the group to:

â?¦specify the nature and extent of rights that a group member can assert to intellectual property. They also include procedures for the claiming of intellectual property rights, and community-accepted types of sanctions for violators.

This is a thought-provoking article. We need more work in this vein to be able to show that the present intellectual property regime is far from being the only game in town.

Posted on by mklang